Ready Steady

Go!

I can't tell you how different I feel today - but I'm going to try.....

I'm tired after playing chauffeur to C last night collecting him from the Prom and delivering him to the post Prom party! I'll be lucky if I got six hours sleep and yet I have been more up beat, motivated and enthusiastic than I have been in a while (although I think this may have been in my head, rather than outwardly visible but hey it's a start!).

However, like my photographic experiment earlier this week there are too many variables to be able to pinpoint why this is the case.  But the major contributing factors are:

1. Al and I are celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary today (love you dearly Mr L)

2. One of my parkrun friends has organised an Open Garden Event to raise money for me, thank you SW

Hitting the £300 mark!

3. I sold enough cards at parkrun this morning to have reached another milestone on the totaliser (and as it was earlier on Saturday than my tea party I'm claiming it as the two in one week I'd hoped for!)

4. C has made it home unscathed (phew!)

5. The sun has shone.

6. Al has just dug up the first of this year's produce from the garden.

It definitely wasn't anything to do with the dung heap that Dougal rolled extensively in this lunchtime, but perhaps whilst being a combination of all of the above, the single and most overriding factor that I believe has caused my feeling of invincible optimism is

7. I RAN TODAY!!

I took it steady which was a bit of a different experience to the one I'm used to - I was running among people who were chatting! (I've clearly missed a trick by running too fast to be able to speak). The course we run is three and a half laps round a park and there is a critical speed above which you won't get lapped, under which you will.  I've run either side of it, but don't know exactly where it is. It dawned on me at some point this morning that I was at risk of being lapped by Al, in fact I was so sure of it that when it didn't happen I stopped to check my distance just to make sure I hadn't miss counted and had another lap to do! (Perhaps it would have done at last week's speed Al, but he had an unfathomable forty five second slower run today and is gutted and I know exactly how that feels).

I, on the other hand, am awash with post run euphoria - I did it, I loved it, and I just feel SO much better for it (if I ignore my ankles and shins!).  It makes me come home and want to conquer the world - or at least the overflowing wash basket!  And who says romance is dead?!

M - 689
Total distance covered 133.7 miles (yippee!!)